EDITTED Thanks to Fuzzy Elf for proofreading and unknowingly helping me to fix something in the last paragraph that I had understood clearly, but that I understand no one else might have. (Notes on it are in my LiveJournal.)

Hero

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Chapter I:

The Unknown War

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." – Edmund Burke

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No one protested. No one rebelled. No one even moved forward as if, emboldened just for a moment, he had considered disputing the verdict. It wasn't a popular decision. He knew because their faces told him. They grimaced, they flinched, they winced; they pulled their mouths tight in reluctant acceptance, and they glared with eyes that were ultimately harmless. Their faces told him just how much they hated this. And their inaction told him just how much they didn't care. They didn't know to fear it. Maybe that was why no one said anything. It was another unfortunate turnabout to them, one that the natural cycle of wins and losses would rectify but, in the meanwhile, wouldn't do much damage.

No! No, no, no. The word sped through his mind on repeat. It sounded like a child's denial – or a madman's: close your eyes and it will all go away.

He imagined himself lunging toward the monitor as if he could reach all the way through the glass to prevent the future that was set in motion by a confluence of undesirable events, immoral technicalities, and unfortunate obligations. Really, though, he didn't move at all. He stood rigid, his entire body perfectly controlled so that no muscle flexed and no nerve twitched involuntarily. Not even his chest rose and fell because, for an unnatural few minutes, he didn't need to breathe. All of the air in the room went toward sustaining the inferno in his eyes and, had he inhaled, he might have choked on the smoke.

They didn't sense any danger when Cornette handed him that championship title. Or perhaps they did and they brushed it off as untenable paranoia. He hated them for letting this happen. He hated Joe for fighting the opponents and not the threat. He hated Christian for fighting him when he should have been fighting Jarrett. He hated Ron Killings and Monty Brown and Raven. He hated all of them for not listening when he said Jarrett had to go. He hated them for not helping, for not fighting.

I told you not to let him! his voice screamed in his head. I told you! Not to let him.

Please, he wanted to be wrong. He would leave, job-not-quite-done-but-disaster-averted, if he could be wrong about this. Unfortunately, he had seen enough of the past to know what was coming now.

Something important left him: hope, maybe, that he could change the future, or perhaps the will to fight. It felt as if his very soul had burned up and died. Whatever it was, it left him hollow and weightless, yet, at the same time, he felt heavier than he ever had before. He felt… tired – of everything. It wasn't his responsibility. It was not his job to protect them, especially since no one had protected him. He tried to save them, and he couldn't. He wanted to rest now, to feel the effects instead of being the cause. He wanted his only reaction to be indifference or apathy or, maybe, a mild irritation at all the people who were doing nothing to right this wrong. He knew how this would go. They would end up saying everything except what they knew in the back of their minds was really happening. They wouldn't acknowledge what was happening until they looked down and saw that someone had shackled their wrists and their ankles and turned them into slaves without their knowing.

He didn't want them to experience the tyranny in order to see it. But they were young, mostly, and they didn't know what it looked like. They deserved it, he thought cruelly. But they were so young.

Sting found himself at war within. He wanted to leave them to the horrid fate awaiting them, but he wanted to save them from it too. Anger made him want to abandon them; compassion made him want to protect them. There was a battle between Good and Evil going on inside him and, when he realized that, he knew which feeling to embrace. There was a wrong in need of righting.

Something rose up from the ashes inside him: a new fire, kindled by his desire to do good. It was a small fire, not yet blazing nor as bright as it could be. In a way, the fire was young, and it was rebellious. He saw what was coming with an omniscient clarity, but he would still try to defy fate.

It's not too late, he thought, even though he knew it was. There's time. I can maybe- I can fix this, he thought, even though he knew he couldn't.

What was he fighting for? Who? He didn't want to fight for these men who wouldn't fight for themselves, but he also felt that he needed to protect them from an evil they didn't see. It wasn't fair to him, he knew, that he should fight so that they could live happily and unaware. He chose to fight for them. He knew exactly who he was fighting for, too. He was fighting for guys who probably didn't give a damn either way, guys who this wouldn't affect at all, guys who would eventually fight but none who would lead, and guys who would eventually fight against him. Yes, he knew what this job entailed. He knew that not all of them were worth it, that not all of them were good people, that not all of them had any redeeming qualities… but maybe some of them were good people, and maybe some of them did have some redeeming qualities. He didn't know. But he would fight for them anyway.

Sting threw his heavy coat into the corner and headed to the ring. The muscles in his body vibrated like a loose string suddenly pulled tight. Every step he took was purposeful and yet uncertain.

He wanted so badly to believe that he would win even though he knew he wouldn't. Truth and desire clashed and melded until he was no longer sure of the outcome. Dozens of black cables lined the grey floor, guiding him to the arena. Sting buried his knowledge deep in the back of his mind, so far that it almost touched his subconscious. The arena hummed, but none of the noise stood out. Everything blended together. Hope filled the void left by certainty's absence.

In the first war between Good and Evil, he had been a warrior on the side of Good. As he slid into the ring behind Jarrett and Steiner, thinking about who had won that war, he realized something that made the fire inside him freeze: he hadn't won that war. Jarrett and Steiner turned around, and he clobbered them both. Sting had thought that the belt, the one made of leather and gold and prestige, had been what decided the victor. Together, he and Christian emptied the ring and stood tall in a moment that was both forever and fleeting. Sting had won the belt – a long time ago, in a different world – but that hadn't won the war.

Everyone had won the war.

Oh God, he thought. Sting looked over at Christian, standing on the middle turnbuckle, his arms held proudly above his head, and wondered how he could convince everyone that there was a war, much less make them fight in it.

He couldn't win it by himself like he had once thought he could.